r/sleeptrain

The 6 month sleep regression has rocked our house and we’ve determined it’s time to sleep train. I have a question though. Right now we’re using a pack and play in our room. If we are going to sleep train, should we be moving him to his own room and into his crib or is that way too much change all at once? I’d like to do this as gentle as possible because I know he’s going to have such a hard time. He’s not the type of kid that fusses, he has full on melt downs and becomes inconsolable. He has also never slept longer than 15 minutes (maybe) in his crib for a nap. He loves to hang out in the crib awake but he refuses to sleep in there. He also has only ever let us put him down for a nap very few times but it’s because he’s been in a very deep sleep. He only likes to contact nap.

He was such a good night time sleeper before this regression and I’m so sad it’s come to this. I really didn’t think we were going to have to sleep train.

Any advice welcome! Thank you!

Hi all, this group has been so helpful and I'm back with our latest issue that I could use advice on. Early morning waking.

10.5 months old baby. After a long road with Ferber we are on a great nap and sleep routine but the only thing going wrong is she wakes up sooo early. She is sleeping great through the night but waking up between 4:30-5 and is wide awake for the day. We've tried letting her cry but she will just stand up in the crib and cry off and on until til 6ish when we just get up. I would love if we could get her to sleep until 7. This is the schedule currently:

6am wake up
9:30 nap, usually 1hr
2pm nap, usually 1 hr
7:30 bed time

So 3.5/3.5/4.5

We already tried later bedtime for the last 2 weeks moving it gradually back to 8:30 but she still woke at the same time. Could it be that she can tell it's getting light out? We have blackout shades but they let a sliver in, could that be the issue? Do we need to stick with later bedtime even though it made her super cranky in evenings and less sleep overall?

Hi all. Our 15 month old has slept through the night since 10 months, sleep trained and removed bad associations etc. Used to go down peacefully absolutely 0 refusal and the whole process would take 5 minutes.

Now all of sudden he starts getting upset as we start the bedtime routine, refuses to drink his milk and then cries standing in his cot. I manage to get him to sleep by sitting by his cot and eventually laying him down and putting my hand on him. He then wakes up in the early hours and I have to go in and resettle him, if he hears me leave at all he'll be back up.

A few times I've given in and brought him to our bed so we can all get some sleep. I just need to know if this is a phase and some co-sleeping won't cause a long term association, or if it's reset his ability to sleep independently and I need to redo the sleep training methods?

Thanks in advance for your tips and experience

Ok i’ve been reading other posts here that are similar so I didn’t have to post my own, but there’s nothing exactly like that so this is our situation.

Our baby ever since a newborn truly has never “love to sleep :D
He’s extremely (and I mean EXTREMELY) active and very happy (90% of the time)
He’s now almost 7 months old his sleep looks like this but varies!

I actually don’t know where to start :D

He is breastfed if that means anything and he has a poor latch (no tongue tie) he will eat the let down and then eat like an hour later we’ve seen specialist in this area and they say he is satisfied with just that. More personality than anything :D (wonder) I feel like a full belly would have a lot to do with it.

Ok he wakes up anywhere from 5:30am - 7am (so happy)
Shows a sleep cue like eye rubbing or yawning I immediately try to put him to bed so often times that the first 30min to an hour of being awake.
Now by putting him to bed I mean fighting with him while I rock him thru the loudest screaming then fades to eye rolling and slow blinks then he catches himself falling asleep then more screaming and we repeat this for about an hour. His dad can get him to sleep at that time frame more often than I can :D

Then he sleeps finally for anywhere from 10min to an hour but more often a 30 min nap we try to bridge his naps by re rocking but that’s the same battle from above for another hour most times. (We’ve tried letting him just lay there after he wakes on a short nap but he will never let himself fall back asleep. He’ll would have to freeze over) we do let him just rest there sometimes too before letting him be officially awake or helping him back to sleep.

He does nap best when dad holds him thru it on the weekends (as the mom, I feel some type of way lol)

I just want to reinstate that he remains completely active thru all this like moving his hands and feet’s etc. (I worry he is really really struggling more abnormally then most with relaxing his nervous system) if you show any signs letting him stay awake after screaming episodes “letting him win” he will be soooo happy big smiles and start talking.

After his nap or w.e you wanna call that he’ll be up till his very next sleep cue and that ranges really from an hour to 3 but if we let him stay up at all he will happily be up ALL day with just sleep cues. I hate and feel awful if it ever gets overtired stage which happens more often then I’d like to admit. Especially when my mother watches him who has had five kids under five and says they will sleep when they want to sleep. (Is that true even especially when they’re showing sleep cues and will never let them self sleep anyways) he doesn’t fight strangers like he fights his parents going to sleep in fact, he will sleep for strangers easily (my friends he doesn’t see often) he has started to fight my parents a little bit as he gets more used to them. But the 30 minute nap remains the same in most cases.

We religiously put him down to sleep around 7:30 to 830. However, he wakes all night for small feedings and we do go sleep so he normally will go back to bed right after eating sometimes I think he’s just sleep eating and that’s about six times through the night. Lately he’s been getting up from 3 AM to 5 AM then eventually I get him to go back to sleep.

We are surviving and we can totally keep pushing through this, however we feel like just life size amoeba‘s at this point lol he’s growing and gaining weight and infects pretty big! We help his teething at any point he still doesn’t have any bumps or signs of them pushing thru. (I know that doesn’t mean he’s not teething) we use natural remedies chew toys, extra love, extra cuddles. But he’s so active he really doesn’t love to cuddle. He just wants to be held and played and talked to. I tried to put anything I could possibly think of so sorry if this sounds like a overtired dump. :D

( I fear anxiety runs in my family I’m fortunate to have not experienced it but it’s very heavy on my side. I’m not sure the science or studies done behind infants on early signs or if that’s just so left field to say.

This is her schedule (3/3.5/4) and she has no issues napping during the day. If I didn’t cap her first nap she’d easily nap 2-2.5 hours if I’d let her.

Wake 6am
Nap 1 9-10:30am
Nap 2 2-3:30pm
Bedtime 7:30pm

Hi all. Asked about a month ago when baby was having trouble with his 3rd nap. I increased his wake windows to 2.5/2.5/2.75/2.25 and all was fine.

Earlier this week he started having restless periods during the night again, having 1 or 2 intervals where he wakes up every 15-20 minutes for an hour. Then 4 days ago he started having trouble with the 3rd nap again. He stays up until the 3 hour mark or more then gets overtired and starts crying so I've been having to bounce him to sleep for the 3rd nap. Then 3 days ago we started having issues with the rest of the naps. First he's moved to falling asleep for the 2nd nap closer to 2.75. Then, yesterdat both 1st and 2nd nap were shorter than usual. Today he slept ok for the first nap but only 40 minutes for the 2nd nap. Also started taking 30-40 minutes to fall asleep at bedtime.

So current schedule is something like 2.5/2.75/3/2.5. He has slept better with this schedule overnight but still struggling with naps. DWT is 7 (was 6:30 but I moved it by half an hour cause even with more wake time he was still waking up at 6 or earlier and moving DWT solved it). Bedtime is between 7:30 and 7:50. He wakes any time between 6:30 and 7 but most days it's closer to 7. Daytime sleep is between 2 hours 45 minutes and 2 hours 55 minutes, but with the short naps the last few days it's been between 2.5 and 2.75 hours.

The 3rd nap happening only after 3 hours has also pushed bedtime to 8pm some nights and that has caused EMW 2 times this week already.

Do I add more wake time or would it be time to drop to 2 naps since it's the second time in a month where the 3rd nap causes issues? He's 6.5 months old.

14 month old is definitely ready to fully transition to one nap but has been having emw anywhere from 5 to 5:45. This makes it extremely hard to make it to one nap even to 11:00 so there are days where I have to squeeze in a late afternoon micro nap (which only seems to overtire him imo). Right now wake windows are 5/5.5. He is not sleep trained and we co-sleep. Do I just keep pushing through until he makes it to 11 even though he’s waking up super early? He’s very sensitive to being overtired as well that’s why I’m hesitant. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

After a week plus of rough sleep due to ear infections, we are ready to get back on track but aren't sure how to reset. Before getting sick, the last schedule that worked well for our 16 month old was this: 5.75/5.5-- DWT 6:45, Nap 12:30-2:30, Bed 8pm. Now, he's having consistent MOTN wakes anywhere from midnight to 4am and screaming until we get him (which we were doing when he was sick.)

Last night, he was up from about 2am-4am and we both accidentally slept past DWT until about 8am. How should we approach today (and the next few days) to get him back to sleeping through the night?

I have a 6 month old baby. She has only slept through the night ONCE. We’ve tried the whole beside bassinet, crib in her own room, white noise, sleep sack, rock/pat to sleep, setting her down “drowsy” (which has never worked lol), doesn’t take a paci and she will just not sleep for more than 2 hours without waking up.

We do cosleep. I made that decision at 2 months when none of the above worked and I wasn’t getting any sleep. Nursing to sleep is the only way I can get her to stay asleep. I’m able to feed, unlatch, and she can fall asleep in my arms but the moment I set her down she will cry. And WILL NOT stop until I pick her up or nurse her. Throughout the night, she still wakes up almost every 1-2 hours and immediately looks for me to nurse. I know she’s not hungry and she’s doing it for comfort as she’ll drift back to sleep in a few minutes. She can go 1 hour crying with me picking her up, patting, rocking but won’t stop unless I nurse her.

Day time naps are also horrible. I can pretty much time when she’s sleepy and needs a nap. But I almost always need to nurse her and stay with her or she’ll wake up. I tried a 3 nap schedule and stretching her wake windows so she’s tired enough but not overtired and nothing ever seems to work.

Wake time 7am
1st Nap around 9:30am
2nd Nap 1pm
3rd nap 4pm
Bedtime 7:30pm-8pm
*Naps usually last less than an hour.
*She’s waking every 40 mins-hour at night.

I’m just so tired. I just want her to sleep for more than 2 hours straight. I’ll take 3-4 hours I’m not asking for an entire 8-12😭. We tried the whole sleep train thing. Cried for 2 hours. I don’t like CIO. Tried Ferber method.

Please send help & tips!!!

***Also is my baby teething + learning new skills also affecting sleep? And will it affect sleep training or is that just a myth? Sorry FTM here :)

I have an 8 month old who is the absolute light of my life! They make me and my husband so happy, and I often wonder how we could be so lucky to have such a wonderful LO. However, we struggled with sleep from day dot, fighting naps, awake for hours upon hours in the newborn phase and contact napped exclusively. After a lot of hard work learning about and implementing good sleep practices/sleep training methods, we have got a solid routine down - in no small part thanks to this group!!! We still have our moments of course, but I feel so lucky as I know so many people struggle with this. I have found 99% of the time when we have a wobble, the answer is less sleep 😂

However, our LO has a 24 hour sleep tank of 11.5 hours - so 1.5 hours of naps across 2 naps, and 10 hours at night. I see so many people saying their baby gets 13.5 hours in a day and I sometimes feel so jealous! We were on that at 4 months and it has dropped steadily ever since. I'm physically and mentally knackered, especially as we are in our frustration learning to crawl phase and being completely honest it's really taken me a while to come to terms with the fact I have a baby on the lower end of sleep needs. I know it's not even super low, but it still feels really hard!

I suppose I'm just looking for some solidarity - has anyone else found this, and did you ever find your baby's sleep increased once they started to expend more energy crawling/walking etc? Speaking to some mums at baby classes etc they haven't sleep trained and don't fully understand the 24 hour sleep needs, so it feels hard for them to comprehend what I'm going through as they will just put the baby down for another nap and not have it fought!

Hi everyone,

I have an 8 month old who went into their own room last week. Baby has never been a good sleeper. Currently is going to sleep in cot, with parent sitting in chair next to the cot - occasional reassurance provided in form of hand holding or resting hand on baby's tummy. Baby falls asleep within about 20 minutes.

Baby is waking every hour overnight since moving into own room - settles most of the time once parent is back in the room sitting next to the cot.

I am exhusted - baby is very obviously exhausted too. It's been a long week. Does anyone have any advice for how I could improve the constantly wake ups for reassurance?

Current Schedule:

7am wake up

10am - 1.5hr nap

3pm - 1 hour nap

730pm - bedtime routine

8pm - put down in cot awake

Baby still takes one feed overnight, usually about 3am. Baby only sleeps during the day in pram or car - refuses cot naps and has always done so even when room sharing

Thanks for any help anyone can give! X

I have a 6 month old baby. She has only slept through the night ONCE. We’ve tried the whole beside bassinet, crib in her own room, white noise, sleep sack, rock/pat to sleep, setting her down “drowsy” (which has never worked lol), doesn’t take a pack and she will just not sleep for more than a 2 hours without waking up.

We do cosleep. I made that decision at 2 months when none of the above worked and I wasn’t getting any sleep. Nursing to sleep is the only way I can get her to stay asleep. I’m able to feed, unlatch, and she can fall asleep in my arms but the moment I set her down she will cry. And WILL NOT stop until I pick her up or nurse her. Thought the night, she still wakes up almost every 1-2 hours and immediately looks for me to nurse. I know she’s not hungry and she’s doing it for comfort as she’ll drift back to sleep in a few minutes.

Day time naps are also horrible. I can pretty much time when she’s sleeping and needs a nap. But I almost always need to nurse her and stay with her or she’ll wake up. I tried a 3 nap schedule and stretching her wake windows so she’s tired enough but not overtired and nothing ever seems to work.

I’m just so tired. I just want her to sleep for more than 2 hours straight. I’ll take 3-4 hours I’m not asking for an entire 8-12😭.

Please send help & tips!!!

Over the past few months I’ve really tried to optimize my son’s sleep. He’s now 6 months and we’ve paid for a sleep consultant to help us sleep train & also paid for dreamie through Reddit. It’s gotten better with us learning to extend wake windows and push bedtime later, but I’m just wondering if I pull all the right levers does that get him sleeping through the night? Or am I just putting him in the best position to, but it’s just random and we are waiting for him to develop those skills?

For example, if I put him to sleep independently and he hits all his wake windows and nap times and gets his proper hours of wake time. Does that equal him sleeping through the night? Or do I need to lower my expectations and live with 1-2 wakes a night?

Baby girl had her 6 month well child visit today. Her weight percentile increases each visit. Born at 15% and now at 60%. Her sleep is still all over the place, but usually wakes up 2-3 times a night no matter how good we are about wake windows. It seems random regarding when she’ll wake 1-2 times vs 3 times. She’s in between 2 and 3 naps. We try to do 2.5 hours of naps max, 3 hours awake before sleep. Usually sleep 730 and wakes around 6am.

The pediatrician thinks she could wean off of night time feeds but baby takes full feeds on each side. It makes me think she still needs them, especially as her weight is continuing to increase.

What are everyone’s thoughts?

Edit: we did sleep training (gentle Ferber) at 4 months so baby can go to sleep on her own (husband does go in to calm baby down before she falls asleep), but the first stretch isn’t very long. At best 4 hours usually.

My 7.5 month completely sleep trained at 5 months old has started doing these weird split nights lately and I’m not sure if it’s a schedule issue, teething, or both.

He usually wakes around 6am and currently does 3 naps a day. His last nap often ends around 3 or 3:30pm, then he gets super sleepy by 5:30pm and goes to bed easily. The issue is he keeps waking around 2 to 3am and stays awake for 40 mins to 1 hr. He’s not hysterically crying, more just awake, babbling, needing paci reinserting etc.

He is definitely teething right now and has does 3 hour to 3 hour 15mins total day sleep. He also can’t really handle more than a 2 to 2.5 hr last wake window yet without melting down.

I tried removing the catnap that he ised to take from 5pm to 515pm and doing early bedtime but the 2am wakes still happened. I’m wondering if 5:30pm bedtime is now too early for him and causing the split nights because he seems to naturally do around a 10 hr stretch.

Would you:

keep the early bedtime

add back a tiny bridge nap

or push bedtime later gradually?

Would really appreciate hearing from parents who went through this awkward 3 to 2 nap transition phase 😭

Baby is 7.5 months old and we just started the 3 to 2 nap transition. She exclusively contact naps (my own personal hell) and so far we are sticking with it. But so often even in contact naps she will wake up in 30-40 mins and will not go down again no matter what nanny (and sometimes even me) do. That ends up requiring a 3rd nap or she gets super overtired. She still fights the third nap. So far out of 3 days this week we could only manage 2 naps yday which happened by some miracle because sleep conditions were all the same. How are you getting longer naps to reduce frequency???

Over and over and over!! Do I flip him back each time? CIO? He does sleep on his stomach here and there.

Last night at 4am, my partner and were exhausted and let him CIO. It lasted 10-15 mins before he gave up and slept on his tummy. Before that we were up every hour consoling him or flipping him over.

Help!

Moved to 3/3/3.25 for my 7.5 month old. She’s crazy overtired and having lots of false starts at bedtime. Any suggestions? Is the total wake time not enough? Naps today were 2hrs 45 min.

I need advice (and so many prayers) on how people sleep trained a highly sensitive high needs velcro/FOMO baby. My baby is nearly 5 months and it's all been HELL. I never got the newborn bubble, and we're still crying hard most of the time and every day and every night. I'm a first time mum who was expecting multiple wake ups to feed and console but this has been absolutely life draining and pushing me into depression. During the day the smallest thing will make him spiral and I don't think it's always tiredness - I've tried adjusting wake windows and getting more daytime sleep, earlier bedtime. All naps are full contact with bouncing or rocking and white noise. But I can't start his nap too soon or he has a meltdown, dark rooms make him cry these days, the white noise sometimes makes him cry too. Maybe it's just negative associations now with how much he fights sleep, then spirals into inconsolable crying from being overtired. He's never slept in his crib because he hates it. I've tried warming it, I've tried very very very slow put down feet first. I've tried drowsy but awake which just pisses him off and makes him cry inconsolably for a hour or more even after pickup. I've tried putting down awake which also pisses him off. I've tried everything I can think of but nothing is working and he's crying so much during the day as well I'm so worn out I'm actually hating life. I can't take this anymore.

He's BF but also bottle fed with expressed milk when my husband or parents feed him during my 4.5 hour sleep. But the real crux is how his sleep has gotten so bad that he cannot nap or sleep unless he's being held or attached to my nipples. Even if we're holding him he'll still wake at least once every hour. if we even try to put him down he wakes up and goes from 0-100 with absolutely inconsolable crying even with one of us holding and trying to soothe him. It goes on for an hour sometimes and nothing will soothe him except BF. He hates dummies and spits them out. He cries like the world is ending and he turns red and sweaty and coughs and vomits. I've ended up Co-sleeping which I never wanted to do but even then he'll only sleep lying down if he's on his side sucking on my breast. As soon as he detaches he cries. I'm so sad he's crying so hard even if we're trying to soothe him, he's basically in my arms and feeding all night.

He's still got reflux which the GP refuses to medicate and just vomits all the time, but isn't always upset by it anymore but because he's just constantly feeding overnight he's vomiting and waking then crying, then comfort feeding and the cycle repeats.

I've stopped meeting other mums and trying to go to groups because everyone else has chill babies and loving life and it makes me hate my life more. I love my baby in the short windows when he's happy but I'm starting to spiral and I need something to get better.

For anyone who had a similar reflux, colicky, high needs, highly sensitive FOMO/Velcro baby - how did you sleep train and did it work? ​